The topic, by today’s standards at least, was a straightforward one: the deflation of footballs.

Yet somehow, Mike Leach, who always has been something of a crooked line anyway, darted off course and soon was the one hissing hot air.

“With everything that’s going on, we’re worried about how much air goes into a ball when everybody uses their own ball,” Washington State’s coach told ESPN recently. “It’s not like it’s a forged football.”

At this point, Leach lurched, violently so, careening down a path that not even anyone at The Weather Channel could have forecast.

“We waste a lot of time with that, and then we worry about the Kardashians,” he continued, still, keep in mind, answering the original question. “How can it be that we laugh about England’s obsession with the royal family? At least the royal family has college degrees and military service.”

Upon hearing those words, my response was more reflex than reaction. I grabbed my phone and, in a manner that suggested I was dialing 911 because I had just fallen waist-deep into a pit of tarantulas, I scrambled to find the upcoming college schedule.

Clearly, this was a sport that was ready for some football, for anything that would move the focus from the coaches to the players, back to the games themselves because there obviously is now way too much time to fill between snaps.

It has been nearly eight months since Ohio State’s third-best quarterback beat the world, lifting the Buckeyes over Oregon for the College Football Playoff title.

Since then, in an attempt to occupy our idle minds, we’ve been subjected to a breathless barrage of desperate hype, of stories, Instagram photos and blog posts, many dealing with the sport’s most significant offseason sideline addition.

But enough about Jim Harbaugh’s pants.

We’ve had almost eight months to kill and, thankfully, Michigan hiring Harbaugh managed to kill just about everything, including most of my faith in mankind.

Sorry, but I refuse to recognize Harbaugh as “the savior,” since I’m pretty certain the second coming won’t include a home date against UNLV.

Officially, Wolverines offensive lineman Kyle Kalis has been credited with giving Harbaugh that moniker, but my question, concerning identities in Ann Arbor, is this: Based on the intensity of the Harbaugh phenomenon, shouldn’t Kyle Kalis be forced to change his name to Kyle Khakis?

The guess here is Michigan will be greatly improved and it won’t take long, Harbaugh as familiar as anyone with how quickly he can build programs and burn landscapes.

The school will pay its new coach $5 million this season, not including the $2 million signing bonus that has become standard in the contracts of all saviors.

With his deal, Harbaugh landed near the top of the list of college football’s highest-paid coaches, a list headed by, of course, Nick Saban, whose status as a biblical figure long has been established in Tuscaloosa, where, in a twist on the old saying, religion is a football.

Saban’s base salary at Alabama will be slightly more than $7 million, which probably seems excessive, right, more of an off-base salary? The school, however, is similarly generous when it comes to the academic side.

No, I’m not kidding. A few professors at Alabama will also make close to $7 million this year, according to Time magazine. OK, not just a few. Actually, 50 of them will make that much.

And OK, technically, you have to combine the salaries of 50 Alabama professors to, by Time’s calculations, equal one Nick Saban. But, come on, when’s the last time ESPN’s “GameDay” showed up at a psychology class?

Meanwhile, Charlie Weis continues to be paid by Notre Dame and Kansas, even though he doesn’t coach at either school anymore.

If that fact also sounds ridiculous, how ridiculous does it sound that Notre Dame and Kansas, by the time Weis’ severance packages are drained, will have paid him nearly $23 million not to coach?

Hey, the good news is we’re closer to kickoff now than when this column began 650 or so words ago. Soon enough, there will be actual scores and plays and coaching decisions to discuss.

But before that, let’s revisit my favorite moment from college football’s preseason. It happened the third week of August, in San Bernardino, where UCLA’s Jim Mora publicly blasted freshman quarterback Josh Rosen for a perceived lack of intensity during a practice drill.

After loudly chiding Rosen about his high school career, Mora turned to the members of the media present and shouted, “Tell your readers. This is why there’s no starter (yet).”

Here was Mora, suddenly enlisting the services of the same reporters whose access, during his tenure, he has been steadily and increasingly restricting.

And here I am, doing exactly what Mora said that day, willingly being used until the next time I’m conveniently tossed aside.

Jeff Miller has been a sports columnist since 1998, having previously written for the Palm Beach Post, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald. He began at the Register in 1995 as beat writer for the Angels.

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